The oldest fossil of a human being was discovered in South Africa, which makes a lot of scientists believe that Africa is the “birthplace” of civilisation and human beings. This means that human beings were first in Africa, creating communities, before some of them migrated to other parts of the world. Eventually they developed their own basic communities into civilisations like those we know of today.
The oldest known civilisation is that of the Aboriginal Australians. These are the people who first inhabited Australia as we know it, and are believed to have first settled in Australia around 40,000 years ago! The first civilisations always settled around river valleys, where they had a source of water, rich, fertile soil to farm, and a form of transportation.
It is important to know about past civilisations, because studying them allows us to see the progress and changes we have made as a society, as well as our achievements! It is also a way for us to understand how people in the past used to live, and how cultures differed globally. Ancient civilisations around the world had their own unique cultures, and by looking at these civilisations we can see how they lived and how different their lives were to the ones we lead today!